Nothing on the Murrah Building, 15 years hence?

MSNBC has some documentary worth a look, but dammit, 24 is on at the same time and the other tube in our house is a slave to Dancing With the Stars.

Where were you on the day it happened? What were your thoughts?
Mine? I knew Muslims were responsible for it. Then we met Mr. McVeigh.

I went to the memorial a few years back. Nothing is as hard as walking through the room with the pictures of the dead with a personal artifact, all in a 8 by 11 cube on the wall. I remember watching an elderly man barely make it out before crumbling up in a weeping mess on a nearby bench. Nothing has ever gripped me more.

First, why do people start threads with questions about starting a thread? Just start the damn thread!

In other news, 15 years ago, I heard about at work... in the World Trade Center. I was explaining to my colleagues that whomever did Oklahoma City wasn't a Muslim, but was probably a member of the Patriot movement. I knew this only because the previous year I had been a reporter in Franklin, Ind., seeing some of those yobbos up close, so I knew April 19 was a big day because of Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Since we've had lots of bad airline stories recently, I'll tell a positive airline story that involves the Murrah Building.

This must have been 2003. I was working at Continental Airlines heading up our sports/events marketing. It was April 18th, and I received a call from Giuliani's press person (I had previously worked for Giuliani).

A group of 9/11 family members were flying CO down to Oklahoma City to participate in the anniversary ceremonies. They were also going to learn about the Memorial that was built, as they were making plans for a Memorial at the Trade Center site.

The family members were stuck on the tarmac at Newark and were going to miss their connection in Houston to OKC.

It was the last flight of the night, and our first one in the morning would have gotten them to OKC too late for the ceremony.

I was asked if there was anything I could do to help.

I explained that I worked in marketing and had no operational authority. It was late in the afternoon, probably around 5:00, but I said that I would make a couple of phone calls.

I called our VP of Public Relations first. He wasn't very helpful and told me that I should call flight ops.

So I did, and got the fellow on duty, who I didn't know.

Since he didn't want to hold the IAH-OKC flight, he first looked at alternatives.

Southwest had an early morning flight that would get them there in time. He called his counterpart at WN and was immediately told that Southwest would transport our entire party free of charge.

I was shocked. Both that he could get ahold of the person so fast, and that they would agree to it so quickly.

Now we needed to get them hotel rooms and figure out how to get them from InterContinental on the North side, to Hobby on the South side.

After a while, the guy in ops decided that was going to be too much trouble and he made the decision to hold the IAH-OKC flight until the EWR-IAH flight got in.

What impressed me most was that this guy who made the call wasn't a big shot. But he knew that his superiors would back him up for making the decision he did.

The group made it to OKC in time and were very grateful to participate in the ceremony.

I can't tell you how many hand written cards & letters I received from people in both New York and Oklahoma City thanking me for helping them out.

I had a history professor in college who was ... well, to say he was a libertarian was putting it mildly. His political views kept him from getting tenure and he eventually moved on from the university. But he taught a wildly entertaining and extremely popular class on Scottish and Irish history that I took in the spring of 1993.

That was, of course, when the Waco fiasco took place. I can remember him storming into class that day (or whenever the first class meeting after that was) ranting and raving. I vividly recall what he said just before beginning his regular lecture, words that became prophetic two years later ... "There will be a reprisal for this in the very near future. Mark my words."

MSNBC has some documentary worth a look, but dammit, 24 is on at the same time and the other tube in our house is a slave to Dancing With the Stars.

Where were you on the day it happened? What were your thoughts?

Mine? I knew Muslims were responsible for it. Then we met Mr. McVeigh.

I went to the memorial a few years back. Nothing is as hard as walking through the room with the pictures of the dead with a personal artifact, all in a 8 by 11 cube on the wall. I remember watching an elderly man barely make it out before crumbling up in a weeping mess on a nearby bench. Nothing has ever gripped me more.

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The OKC memorial is outstanding and a must see. But it is very emotionally draining and the room with the victims is definitely the hardest. I completely lost it with one of the children victims, a boy probably about three or four, and his personal artifact being a small plastic animal figure, a seal I believe. My 5-year-old son has a bucket full of those types of animals and man, I just can't imagine the hell everyone involved has gone through. I have to say, if you don't think about everything you see and learn there for at least a few days after you visited you weren't paying attention.

The outside memorial is also incredibly peaceful. You can spend hours there and not even realize it.

I was in college, and for some reason, I remember not even hearing of it until I went into my afternoon class. I think I had slept late and done some errands, and I just didn't bother to watch TV or listen to the radio (Internet was in its infancy).

Later on, I saw that photo of the firefighter holding the dead baby, and I started bawling.

It weirds me out because they bought/stole most of the stuff for their bombs right near my hometown. I don't remember OKC as vividly as 9/11 (I was all of nine when it happened) but I remember bits and pieces of the coverage afterwards. He would probably go down as the worst terrorist in US History if it weren't for al-Qaeda.

I love how the conspiracy theorists use JD2 to fit other conspiracy theories these days. Originally, that was supposed to be Andreas Strassmier, a German who was active in the militia/neo-Nazi movement in the 1990s. He completely disappeared after OKC, leading some to think he was a government plant who helped orchestrate the entire thing so Clinton could crack down on the right wing.

Anyway, I was at my pre-newspaper gig as a 401(k) analyst. I got a phone call from a friend to turn on the TV. Then I spent the next hour working the phones trying to reach a couple of friends who worked near the Murrah Building.

The election of Obama has kickstarted the militia movement again. Hell, they held "Second Amendment Rights" rallies in D.C. yesterday. Yes, on April 19. Yes, it was sparsely attended. But as McVeigh proved, it only takes two (or three or four) to pull off something like that.